Category Archives: Budget

While the Department of the Interior has been in the news for some fairly ridiculous reasons lately, that does not undermine the fact that it is unquestionably one of the worst uses of government power in D.C. which is actively working every day to keep Americans in poverty and hurt the economy.

Born of an era before we had executive level offices that were not necessarily under a cabinet department, the Department of the Interior was originally conceived of a place to stick all the internal brick-a-brack that didn’t really belong in other departments but were federal government domestic issues. Most of the things originally put in this department (like the Patent office) no longer are in the Department of the Interior. And what is left is utterly useless.

And we need to address this issue first because unlike most of the problems in the Department which boil down to give it to the states or sell it to the private sector and close the offices, this disaster of a longstanding government travesty has more intricacies given how deeply we have screwed over, and more importantly how deeply we are screwing them over this very minute, this one group.

Before you ask, yes we are going to get rid of every bit of this god-awful department, but just closing it isn’t the way to do it.

I propose to the following actions
Every Native American currently getting checks from the government just for existing will get a lump sum check equivalent to ten years worth of payments, this should give them an appropriate buffer to either do things they never were able to do on the dole (like get an education and job skills, which sadly is all to often a story on the Res.) or to invest in their own future even if they are already leading a productive life. As much as I hate welfare you can’t cut people off cold turkey and expect them to thrive…but given the particular evil of this department I don’t trust a slow step down either—so lump sum payment and we’re done with that.

At the same time everyone living on the reservation will get a half acre of land put in their name.

All other reservation land will be given to a corporation in the name of the tribe. Members of the tribe living on the reservation will get 1000 shares, those not living on the reservation but still recognized as members of the tribe get 500 (numbers are of course up for debate, but I understand tribal benefits for many tribes already follow this or similar models). So everyone now has land in their own name and the rest of the land is held by a corporation.
Thus they can now get loans, use the land and houses as collateral, invest, develop and generally work to improve their own lives with all the same rights that all other Americans (seriously it is just disgusting how we do not grant basic property rights to this one group). (And personally I wouldn’t mind giving large plots of other federal land to the reservations to also be included in their corporate holdings, they will almost certainly take care of it and make more money off it than the government ever could). Every reservation will then be incorporated as its own county and thus will only have to deal with state and federal governments. Finally all the casinos will be granted 100 year grandfather clauses from state government interference (I don’t like getting involved in state issues like that, but no need to further screw over the tribes, 100 years is more than enough time to find some other source of income or come to some understanding with the states they reside in). The casinos will of course go to the ownership of the tribe’s corporation.
From there they are free to win or lose based on the laws of free enterprise and capitalism. That much property should be a good head start, but this way from this point forward they would be treated not differently than any other American (seriously how has the government not stopped treating them as second class citizens yet..how was this never part of any Civil Right’s movement?) Then you won’t have moments like the government getting to decide if land the tribe considers sacred will be used for mining ) (although my suspicion is that if they were actually making money from a lease of the land personally, like most rational folk profit is very sacred).

Okay here’s an easy one. Just give the land and responsibilities of these over to the states. I’m fairly certain someone in Phoenix has a better idea of how to take care of the Grand Canyon than someone in D.C. So that goes for every federal park. The f

Yes in California, a place where there is a drought, where serious water rationing is in place, where water is at a premium…the government is forcing people to dump over a trillion gallons of water into the ocean to save a useless fish. I’m sorry but the destruction of billions of dollars in agriculture (and the relating economic benefit) is clearly more important than a damn fish that no one but the US government cares about.

US Geology Survey, Bureau of Land Reclamation, Bureau of Mining Reclamation
If these serve any purpose, which is doubtful, it’s something the states can handle at probably half the price.

Office of Insular Affairs
This office actually does need to be kept around since they’re the management of all those territories we still have (which is a federal issue). But it can go on as an executive office, you don’t need a whole department for it.

Bureau of Ocean Energy Management
These are the geniuses who told B.P that drilling close to the shore was dangerous and you have to drill further out in the ocean for it to be safe.
Yeah they’re useless.

And finally we get to the problem we’ve been hearing about so often lately

Bureau of Land Management

247.3 million acres.
That’s how much land BLM has. One-eighth of the US.
Most of that land isn’t park land, it’s grazing land, it’s land with resources, it’s land that could be sold either to the states or the private sector for a huge profit (didn’t we have a debt we needed to pay off?)

There is no reason for the government to own any of that! There is barely a reason that states should own this land.This land needs to be sold off. Granted many people depend on this land for their livelihood and I have no problem with offering them to buy the land they have been leasing at whatever the market place for such undeveloped land is…but if they don’t want to buy it the land needs to go up for auction—probably over the course of a few years as putting that much land on the market at once would collapse all prices, but the government does not need to own this land. And not only because there is no reason for the government to own it…but because as with all things, they’re losing money on it. Only the federal government can charge people to use land that just sits there and requires little to no upkeep other than what nature provides or what people will pay you to do and still lose money on it.

We don’t need to get into how unbelievably corrupt and inept and inept the people at BLM are because they shouldn’t exist in the first place. Even if they weren’t mentally challenged sociopaths they still shouldn’t exist so their extensive laundry list of moral and intellectual failings is a moot point (unless you want to throw them all in jail, which I’m okay with, but first sell the land and close the office). As a quick intermediary we can just sell the land to the states, but the federal control has to be ended now.

As the lead Federal agency responsible for the protection and sound development of the nation’s natural resources, the Department of the Interior has a special obligation to be a leader in energy management and conservation. As such, bureaus and offices across the Department are committed to conserving energy and water resources, eliminating waste, increasing renewable energy use, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impacts by optimizing the use of energy efficient and water conserving technologies. Bureaus and offices are also striving to incorporate energy efficiency, water conservation, and sustainable practices into the decision-making processes during the planning, design, acquisition, renovations, operations and maintenance of buildings. The Office of Acquisition and Property Management (PAM) coordinates these important Department-wide efforts.

And what in the history of the US Government makes you think that they’re in any way competent to do any of that?
Yeah close this boondoggle as well.

So again, we have a terrible organization that needs to have every single one of its responsibilities either privatized, sent to the states or just ended.

What few legitimate functions the Department does serve could easily be taken up by the private sector or state governments with greater efficiency and lower costs (and on a few of those private sectors ones, the Federal government could actually make some money by leaving the issues to the private sector).
Don’t believe me? Well let’s take a look at all the divisions of the Department.

Agricultural Marketing Service:As the name suggests it’s government trying to control the market in agriculture. Oh, and this is also the agency that does a bang-up job monitoring bacterial contamination in food (I fail to see how a private agency driven by a good old fashion profit motive competing with other private companies for the same purpose couldn’t do a better job here than government workers who by definition are less qualified and less accountable than their private sector counterparts. You get rid of worthless things like this and the inept FDA I will bet you Safeway, Walmart, Whole Foods, Costco will all immediately create business to do their own checking which will compete with each other and keep each other honest…not to mention the fact that profit motive dictates that customers dying quickly of contaminated food and thus don’t buy more products).

Agricultural Research Service: Research funding into how to make agriculture more effective. Yeah definitely something for the private sector to be doing as by definition research for private business should be on the dime of those businesses not the tax payer.

Animal and Plant Health Service: This division does a lot of wonderfully useless things. My favorite being enforcing the Honeybee Act which prevents honeybees coming into the US from outside sources (and the way the law reads it doesn’t just mean Africanized honey bees)…didn’t I read somewhere that the bee population is down in the US? Yes I did...but then I read how private sector fixed this problem all on their own (a problem which probably was partly the fault of the government). Makes you wonder how this divisions stupidity may have effected a species that did quite well on its own.…

Center for the Nutrition Policy and Promotion:These are the geniuses who come up with the food pyramid that’s heavy on starch (and you wonder why the nation is so fat), and likes to tell you what you should and shouldn’t eat like a good intrusive government. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that these are also the idiots who have a hand in coming up with the asinine BMI chart that says everyone but size 0 supermodels are obese.

Economic Research Service: Just the word economic in any branch of the government sends chills down my spine. But basically all this department does is collect numbers. Oh and waste tax payer money while collecting numbers, they do that too.

Farm Service Agency: I don’t know a whole lot about farming, but I do know that if there needs to be regulation of farming at some level it shouldn’t go beyond the state level. There is no conceivable reason why we need a federal branch looking into how farms are run. None. Absolutely none.

Food and Nutrition Service: A bunch of welfare handouts that should at least be handled by state governments not the federal government. In an ideal world those state governments would roll those programs themselves back to nothing, but one thing at a time.
Food Safety and Inspection Service: This is this the organization that incompetently looks after the safety of our food along with the FDA (not only do they suck at doing their job, it’s two different agencies that suck at doing this). Trust me if we broke this and the FDA up into two private companies that bid to get the contracts to ensure the safety of food (trust me the supermarkets will invest heavily in these businesses to ensure they never have to make another recall and the bad press that comes with those) then we would have better food and less tax dollars being stolen from us.

Foreign Agricultural Service: WTF? This is the organization that makes international deals for US produce. Why don’t farmers and private traders make these deals? Because government likes to get its stupid fingers into EVERYTHING. I seriously doubt there will be any disasters (and probably fewer starving people in Africa) if we get rid of this waste of an agency.

Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration: This group supposedly regulates the market and encourages competitive trading practices. Read that sentence again. Only the government thinks that it can regulate and increase competition at the same time despite the fact that they are patently opposed to one another.
National Institute of Food and Agriculture: More wasted dollars on research that the private sector could do just as well.

National Agricultural Statistics Service: More number collecting. But a different number collecting group than the other number collecting group in the USDA that is wasting your money. Because why waste you money on one agency that does nothing, when you can get two agencies for the price of two (or twenty knowing federal accounting).

Natural Resource Conservation Service: Because companies and private farmers don’t know how to run their farms for long term profit…oh wait they probably know how to do that better than the government.

Risk Management Agency: More trying to control the market through regulation. Don’t private companies and co-ops have their own risk management? Why do we need to double up on the tax payer’s dollar?

USDA Department for Rural Development: Again this is the private sector’s responsibility, not the governments.

And finallyThe Forrest Service:First off, why is the Forrest Service not under the Department of the Interior? Secondly with heavy regulation, could we again spin the costs for this off to a private company to tend the forests, make deals with loggers to thin the forest (which needs to be done more if we’re going to avoid these yearly massive fires we have) and shoulder the burden of those massive forest fires.

So private companies that run things for less and with better results to replace the FDA and Forrest Service and maybe a hundred people to enforce regulation via heavy fines for violators now under the Department of the Interior. Shouldn’t cost more than a couple million (maybe even a profit when you figure we’re going to be leasing all that forest land out at a healthy fee).

There is nothing legitimate that this Department does that cannot be done by the private sector.And there is a lot that just doesn’t need to be done. And even more that is being done that shouldn’t. I still can’t figure out which of these useless branches is giving out subsidies to grow tobacco or not grow wheat, but I do know that we give out $20 Billion every year if farm subsidies. Here’s money to grow tobacco which we can then sue the tobacco companies for selling. Here’s money not to grow wheat so we can artificially raise prices (a prime cause of hunger in the third world). Here’ money to grow corn to be turned into ethanol the most worthless alternative fuel in existence because when you factor in the energy and gas required to harvest that corn it comes out to not only being expensive but costing more in fuel than it can produce (government efficiently at its finest). Oh and that’s acreage going to grow corn for ethanol that is not being used to feed people.

This is without question the most useless Department in the government and it needs to go away forever.

So why do I bring this up? I mean this isn’t all that timely a point. Well I bring this up because recently Ted Cruz listed 4 Departments he really feels need to be eliminated…now while I would probably cut it down to only 5 Departments (and give me some time I will detail exactly how I would like that done), Teddy only listed 4 Departments (Education, Housing and Urban Development, Energy, and Commerce)…but not the most reviled of all Departments, the one even more useless than Education, Agriculture? Why would any conservative ever not put Agriculture as one of the first things they would love to kill. Well the answer is Teddy isn’t a conservative, he’s a populist, and in this case a populist pandering at the moment to farmers in Iowa.

Capitalism is the only system that has been shown to raise people out of poverty. It is the only system that benefits the rich, the middle class, and the poor. It is the only system that can bring a nation out of destitution. It is the only system that works long term. It is the only system compatible with human nature. It is the only system of economics that is ethical. It is the only system of economics that is sustainable because only capitalism creates and encourages the innovation and imagination needs to deal with the constant slew of problems that life brings.

You can either be in favor of Capitalism or you can be an idiot who knows nothing about economics, history, psychology, philosophy, ethics, human nature, politics, reason, logic or facts.

Let me say again…You can either be in favor of Capitalism or you can be an idiot who knows nothing about economics, history, psychology, philosophy, ethics, human nature, politics, reason, logic or facts. That is all.

The Path to Prosperity is still the first step we need to take to getting back to sanity. It may not have everything conservatives and libertarians want, but it is the first real step in right direction in a long time.

So this week started out with Paul Ryan stating that he is still planning on the complete repeal of Obamacare. And from what he said before his keynote speech at CPAC…I’m laying even odds that he starts a chorus of “Do You Hear the People Sing” and leads a march to build a barricade around the White House.

But it’s good to know that the crusade to end what is perhaps the worst bill in memory (it’s hard to say it’s the worst bill of all time when you have to compare it to the terrible socialist bills of FDR and LBJ’s presidencies)…still this bill is pretty close to being the straw that broke the camel’s back for this country and it must go before we can fix all the other monstrosities.

But liberals, being the whiny brainless sort that they are will whine “but medical costs are too high. But people have a right to insurance. But people have a right to healthcare!”
Ignoring the simple fact that healthcare isn’t a right by any stretch of the imagination and that if you need healthcare, get a job and earn it, let’s deal with their claim that medical costs are too high.

I would agree medical costs are too high. But, like a bad doctor, liberals want to treat the symptom not the disease. Healthcare costs too much, throw money at it; that should cut the costs.

Conservatives however, like to determine the causes of high costs, which is the disease and treat that. So what are the causes of high costs (hint, it’s not the private sector)?

So what are the three main costs to medical care: Insurance, doctor’s/hospital bills, and drug costs?

So how do we cut insurance costs?

Suggestion #1Tort Reform. Tort Reform. Tort Reform.
Every state that has instituted tort reform has seen medical costs drop, the number of doctors increase, the number of unnecessary procedures drop like a rock and even the number of deaths drop. If the federal government and every state were to institute real and sweeping tort reform you would see every single thing you buy drop in price, but you would probably see the biggest increase in the quality of medicine.

Suggestion #2

We allow insurance companies to cross state lines. Right now all insurance companies are banned from selling insurance across state lines. Look at any insurance card you have. Farmer’s Insurance of California. Blue Cross of Arizona. There may be a national corporation, but it owns 50 separate corporations in 50 different states. That’s a lot of overhead. It also stifles competition. A smaller company can’t expand beyond its own state because it can’t afford to set up a whole infrastructure to have a multi-state operation. This limits competition, and as anyone knows the less competition the higher the prices. If we remove the federal block against insurance crossing state lines you will see drops in every form of insurance you have: medical, car, house.

Just those two things would easily drop the cost of health insurance to probably 90% of its pre-Obamacare costs, perhaps more.

But why stop there? Doctor’s bills themselves also contribute to a large portion of the costs. So what can we do there?

Well a lot of the initial costs come from the fact that when doctors start their career they are laden with college and med school debt. Obscene levels of debt. So let’s fix that.

Suggestion #3
The reason why college costs are so high is because the federal government subsidizes them at outrageous prices. Subsidies always increase costs. Always! So cut all tuition subsidies and grants. Within a year you will see college costs drop. Now this won’t have an immediate effect as the doctors without massive debt will be years away from entering the market, but long term this will not only solve part of our medical problem but our massive college debt problem.

But part of the reason why doctors charge so much is because they know that Medicare and Medicaid aren’t going to pay them their full billing price, so to stay in business this has a threefold fix.

Suggestion #4
Adopt the Ryan Plan which will allow more competition in Medicare and Medicaid, which will both ensure doctors get better payment AND lower the cost to the taxpayer for these costs.

Suggestion #5
In a second step we need to move as much of Medicare and Medicaid costs to the states as possible. While the private sector does better when done on large scale, government and bureaucracy work in the exact opposite manner. The closer any government program is to the people the more efficient and the lower the cost. Lower costs means that Medicaid and Medicare will be able to get closer to pay 100% of doctors’ asking prices for their services (not to mention more doctors taking Medicare and Medicaid patients) which means they will be able to drop their prices for the rest of us and still make a tidy profit for their practice.

Suggestion #6
Increase the penalties for Medicaid and Medicare fraud. We’re talking about nearly $500 Billion in fraud every year. $500,000,000,000.00! I’ll let that number wash over you for a second. That’s one of the main reasons why Medicaid and Medicare can’t afford to pay full price to doctors. Now while I generally don’t believe the government should criminalize more things or come up with even stronger punishments, fraud is something even the most libertarian government must prosecute and fraud against the government doubly so. Penalties and enforcement need to be much stronger. If there’s $500 Billion in fraud it means the risk is much, much lower than the reward. Much lower. If we have to get a little Draconian, so be it, we need to make it very clear that the risk is now worth the reward.

Now the cost of drugs is also an issue. So how do we lower the costs of drugs (and liberals throwing money all willy-nilly at research never works).

However there are things we can do.

Suggestion #7
Allow drug patents to start when the FDA approves the drug. Right now a drug patent (20 years) begins when the drug is patented. So when a drug takes 10-15 years to get FDA approval. This means that the company only has 5-10 years to recoup all of the cost of not only research for that drug, but of all the other drugs that failed. So they have to recoup all of their investment for all R&D in only 5 years. And you wonder why the cost is so high. If we started the 20 year clock when the FDA grants approval they would have more time to recoup costs and thus would not need to charge as much.

Suggestion #8
Reform the FDA. Right now the FDA prevents human testing of experimental drugs on willing patients with terminal diseases….because the drug might kill them. You know if I have a terminal disease the last thing I care about is if a drug will kill me, because I know for a fact the disease will. A lot of medical costs are in cancer treatment; to allow willing patients to try experimental drugs could not only rapidly speed up research (thus cutting costs to a fraction of their current levels) but actually find some cures and real treatments to one of the biggest costs in the medical industry.

And then there are some other things we could do that could help medical care. Nanny’s in the government like to talk to us a lot about eating healthier which is odd since government programs are designed to make sure we don’t eat healthier.

Suggestion #9
End all government subsidies, tariffs, and controls for agriculture. We pay people to grow tobacco, we pay them to grow sugar, we pay them to leave ground fallow. We even pay people to grow corn only to be turned into fuel (ironically it takes over a gallon of fuel to produce a gallon of corn ethanol…that’s efficient.) When you subsidize something you get more of it. And you wonder why it’s hard to get healthy food. Yes, ending subsidies and tariffs on sugar would initially drop the price of sugar, but it would also result in less being produced which would again raise the price. It would also leave more ground for producing the fruits and vegetables we’re not getting right now because fresh food is so overpriced.

Special Idea #11 Fluoridation
Now I usually hate talking about fluoridation. Why? Because so many wacko conspiracy theorist nuts think it’s some grand government conspiracy to control people. It’s not. It was, as with most government actions, a well meaning but idiotic plan. Let’s put fluoride in the water to strengthen their teeth (we can’t trust people with their own hygiene). Yeah let’s put a substance in the water that causes lower IQ’s, higher cancer rates and drastically lowers the thyroid gland (which might have something to do with obesity). What could possibly go wrong? You know between the expansion of the dental industry, better access to toothpaste, and personal responsibility I think our teeth are fine. Let’s stop fluoridating water.

Special Idea #12

Walmart and other such stores apparently want to get into the healthcare business. I say let them. They want to open small clinics. Honestly what they’re proposing will basically act as a triage center. They will tell all the people with just a cough to just get Sudafed, treat the small wounds, and thus clean up the real traffic at urgent care and the ER. This will almost certainly cut down costs from needless tests.

Notice something about this. With the exception of #6, involving the prosecution of criminals (a proper function of government), each and every one of these calls for less government not more. Why? Because government and regulation are what is causing so many problems.

Every single claim here is the result of bad management not because of budget cuts.
Not only is she crying the sky if falling, but every program this idiot mentions could be cut by 100% of their budgets and the economy would actually do better

Ignoring the Jedi Mind Meld thing, I prefer the line “Even though most people agree I’m being reasonable, that most people agree I’m presenting a fair deal, the fact that they don’t take it [blah, blah, blah]”
In what universe does this idiot live in to think that anything he does is reasonable? His answer to everything is higher taxes more spending. Without exception. Not one proposal he has made is reasonable. He makes demands and tells people it’s his way or the high way. Kind of like, oh I don’t know, a dictator.

But rather than deal with these as small cuts and make legitimate cuts Obama would rather treat this like the end of the world.

Not to mention blame others for his mistakes

Does anyone on his staff even realize those WERE the droids they were looking for, thus this quote actually means these are the cuts we’re looking for?…and when has Obama ever dealt in fact or reason?

Of course there is a reason more important than Obama why the economy sucks. And no it’s not even that the government and it’s monstrous regulations and stifling taxes has gotten out of control. It’s the American public.

Look at that list. With the exception of State Department, military defense, veteran’s benefits and maybe environmental protection not one of the things listed should even even be a federal issue. They should be state and local issues. Cut them all and hand them to the individual states. As to the 4 that should be federal issues, trust me they’re not underfunded, there are mountains of wasted dollars, unnecessary employees and useless projects. Not a single one of those programs shouldn’t be cut, most should have their budgets hacked apart by a machete. The sequester’s only problem really is that it doesn’t even begin to cut enough.

This is why the economy sucks because people want the government to provide them a free lunch. They want every thing to be provided for, they don’t want to cut anything they benefit from, they just don’t want to pay for it. So tax someone else and cut programs that don’t benefit me, but don’t cut myprograms.

But of some of us recognize that just about everything the government does, all of its entitlements, programs, systems, and handouts hurt us in the long run.

Yes there are legitimate functions of the federal government that must be funded. Yes you could theoretically cut some of those needed functions too much. But right now we are nowhere near a place where cutting every single office and department wouldn’t be a blessing for the economy and the nation.

And if you want to further keep up on the Sequester and it’s consequences I would go to the The Snark Who Hunts Back who is keeping a journal of how the sequester is affecting all of us. Day 1 and Day 3 journal entries are already up.

If we don’t start having a unified message we will keep losing time and time again.

It’s amazing how quickly I’ve seen the god-awful resurgence of social conservatism. Somehow the fact of the combination of social conservative Santorum undercutting Romney at every chance, social conservative Akin and Mourdock undercutting the whole party with their mentally handicapped statements, and more instances of voter fraud than I know what do with, all led to the downfall of Romney…the social conservatives have taken from this that just running on economics doesn’t work and we need to focus on social issues. It must be interesting to live in the Bizarro universe where social conservatives being part of the reason we lost is a reason why we should focus on social conservatism—but I don’t live in that world, I live in reality.

(…stay with me here it’s going to take a little while to get back to social conservatism…)

And in reality we have this economic principle called Ricardo’s Law or the Law of Comparative Advantage. While the best explanation of this law is found in P.J. O’Rourke’s Eat the Rich: A Treatise on Economics(best books on economics ever) I’ll quickly sum it up here. If you can do two things for a living, let’s say be a carpenter or write computer code you should do what you do better….even if you’re above average in both. It doesn’t matter if you’re good at both, when you split your time between two things you’ll end up producing less, even though in either field you’d produce more than anyone else could. Just trust me that the math works out that everyone should do what they’re best at to create the highest yield of goods.*

When you split your time between two things you always get less of things you’re looking for. Focus on what will give you the highest yield of what you’re looking for and only that.

So what does this have to do with social conservatism?

Well, most social conservatives in the Republican Party are probably also fiscal conservatives (certainly not all, Rick Santorum for instance never met a tax, a regulation, or moment of crony capitalism that he didn’t love) but for the most part the vast majority of social conservatives are fiscal conservatives. Now basic level common sense might seem to suggest that, as a party (ignoring that the party is actually made up of social conservatives, moderates, and liberals) we should try a dual attack of both social conservatism and fiscal conservatism and thus try to get the most voters to come in.

And this is one of those rare times where science/math/economics actually don’t converge with what may seem like common sense.

We can focus on two narratives (that are not always in agreement) trying to pick the most voters, or we can devote all of our time and money into one narrative, which if we apply Ricardo’s law to this situation, and find even greater results than working on both. (Yes it’s always dangerous to apply principles from one field to another, but if you stay with me here you’ll see it does work).

So which narrative should we focus on?
Well let’s look at social conservatism first. First off social conservatism holds a very small appeal (only 18% want abortion completely outlawed, and only 44% consider themselves Pro-life , and the majority of people also favor gay marriage). Further, while you can make excellent arguments for the corrosive effects of low marriage rates on society or this or that point, the issues of social conservatism will, probably more than any other field of public debate, come down to deal entirely with emotion and faith. You can’t argue emotion or faith. You can have the grandest proof in the world, with all the stats and figures and charts you could ever want…still won’t have any effect on emotion and faith. Would any argument convince you to be in favor of abortion? I doubt it. Why do you think the other side will be different? Listen to the stories of people who changed their minds on this issue, it’s not because of some argument, it was because of some personal, emotional experience. Arguments of the social conservative kind only rally those who already believe, the do not attract more voters.Next let’s assume, by some miracle you win with that argument and that argument only. And just looking at, say abortion, let’s say somehow Roe v. Wade is overturned by a new court (and the problem with that is that conservative judges hate overturning precedent, they hate it, so the likelihood is very low)…guess what, it’s still not going to matter. Why? Because the federal government, while it may have to power to prevent laws, it can’t outlaw things that don’t cross state lines—thus without Roe it just becomes another state’s rights issues. And guess what you may win a few states in the South and a few in the midwest, but with 52% saying they support abortion to some degree and another 28% want it legal in all cases, you would be lucky to get 20 states to outlaw abortion…and they won’t be the states where most of the abortions are occurring already. So for all that work, it will pretty much be the same as it is now. The results are similar for just about every other social issue you can think of. To have the federal government do ANYTHING directly about social issues would require us to ignore the 9th and 10th Amendments (which as good conservatives, we never could).

And let’s just ignore how many people the social conservatism pushes away.

Few votes, few results for a lot of time and effort.

Doesn’t seem like a good result.

Now what if we just made the case fiscal conservatism. Well if you just made the argument for fiscal conservatism (taking a good, conservative, social issues are at best a state’s rights argument and have no place in a federal election) what happens with votes. We gain the real libertarians (ignoring the anti-war leftists who have invaded the party) and moderates who are primarily fiscal conservatives and social moderates. Figure a 6 point gain in the voting for conservatives.

Would wining be the only advantage? No. If you got conservatives in both houses of Congress and in the White House…and I do mean conservatives not wishy-washy RINOs like McCain and Bush…and what will happen. Well the economy will boom as regulation, bureaucracy, red tape and taxes go down. This part we know.

And as icing on the cake, as numerous studies have shown, married people are more likely to be conservative as they have less of a need for a government to take care of them, so fiscal conservatism will breed socially conservative practices which will create more fiscal conservatives.

Social Conservatism does not lead to economic growth (France is very opposed to gay marriage, all the economic good it does them, dozens of nations are socially conservative, it does nothing for them).

Fiscal conservatism leads to people making the choices that social conservatives like because it makes good economic sense.

And the only people the economic conservatism is likely going to offend is a few wacky social conservatives who, in addition to social issues think the government should also be in charge of financial ones. A small minority in the Republican Party indeed.

And here’s the point of why I brought up Ricardo’s law. Making the social conservative argument only alienates people, and gains nothing long term…it only helps the left. So any mixture of the two arguments actually works against the goals of social conservatives.

Scream to the heavens all you want about abortion.** It won’t help you win. But discuss how low taxes and low regulation can help the poor, how less bureaucracy can increase opportunity, and how capitalism increases equality not the other way around and you can actually win people. And in that win you create the habits that you actually wanted to see in people.

*Yes this doesn’t take into account things like the needs and wants of the economy, or that in reality you should do what makes you happiest, not what gets you the most money (although that’s really just Ricardo’s Law looking at ethical goods not monetary ones), and a lot of other variables. Economics has a great term for this, “all things being equal,” if all other variables are controlled for you should do what you do best at, and only that.

** Just give up on gay rights. It’s going to happen. There’s nothing to stop it. On the other hand without liberal funding in education and other various forms of funding the crazy extreme of homosexuals will no longer have the pulpit, and the vast majority of gays who are as boring as the rest of us will take over.

In a war the goal should first and foremost should be winning. Social conservatism isn’t a winning message.

“We will go forward with this agenda with the conservative emphasis on individual effort, opportunity, on self reliance and on opportunity for more people.”

Majority Leader Eric Cantor will probably never be label with the moniker of “The Great Communicator”…which is unfortunate because his ideas are great ones that need to be heard.

Today he gave a speech at the American Enterprise Institute on the goals of the GOP in this Congress covering the free market solutions to innovation, education, immigration, workforce laws, taxes, and healthcare.

When you compare the 2008 numbers to the 2012* numbers you find that Romney beat McCain’s total numbers and he did much better than McCain in 32 states (possibly more as some states still haven’t certified). The three states that saw the biggest loss in GOP numbers were New Jersey, New York (and Sandy might be partially to blame for those two) and California—all three liberal bastions where conservatives may have seen no reason to come out.

Obama did worse in all but 4 states. (Again, maybe a couple more when the counting is done, but it’s still pathetic).

The next thing to look at is that Romney did better with almost every group (except Latinos) than McCain, including young African Americans (which offers hope that this voting block is beginning to realize they’re being used and exploited).

So we’re making headway anyway.

But we can’t rest on that for obvious reasons.

So what I see are the larger things that we, as individuals, may not have a lot of control over…and the smaller things we can do.

Now this last one is probably the easiest. Most of the liberal traps deal with social issues (The libertarians did 600,000 voters better in 2012 than 2008, now, granted that’s a lot of anti-war liberal cowards, but it’s still something we can try and poach). So everyone needs to remember this line and pass it on when it comes to any social policy at the federal level:

“I do not support that personally, but I am a conservative which means I support limited federal government and the Tenth Amendment. While I don’t support that issue personally, it is not the place of the federal government to pick a side one way or the other, that is for individual states to decide and I will stop any attempt by the federal government to intrude on this issue.

And on issues where this can’t help but involve federal issues, the federal government must follow what the majority of the states are doing at the time. “

There you can be against drugs, gay marriage, abortion…but since we believe in the 10th Amendment we don’t think it’s the role of the federal government and will not do anything where the states chose in a way that contradicts our beliefs. Social conservatives, this still allows you to not betray any of your values, but it also upholds your values of state’s rights…oh and it will allow us to win more elections.

You might want to tell me I’m wrong on this, but look at these exit poll numbers.

Blanket opposition to abortion isn’t going to win. Ever again. Now making it a state’s rights issue can win and you can prevent your tax dollars from funding anything…but just a blanket opposition is stupid. The majority support abortion, the exit polls numbers and Gallup confirm this.

We need Voter ID laws in every state. Better checks to make sure we don’t have false registrations (and Draconian punishments for turning in false registrations or “losing” the registrations of people aren’t for the party you like). We need laws to clear the voter rolls every 2 to 4 years. We need to dump these voting machines which seem to be a little too prone to leftist cheating and go back to paper ballots. And we need laws ensuring that military will be counted no matter what.

Now really long term I would love it if we could get a lot of blue states to split their electoral votes, but that’s a pipe dream. And really long term I think we need to look into overturning the 26th Amendment. Yes, it seemed all nice and fuzzy and right to give 18 year olds the vote when we had the draft…but honestly, have you met most 18 year olds? I mean we don’t trust these idiots with alcohol or rental cars…but we trust them with the future of the nation? Yeah there are exceptions, and I’m more than willing to say anyone who has served or is serving their nation has the right to vote…but honestly, I think we need to move the age up to 30. I mean just look at these numbers. People under 30 are statistically idiots.

And of course we need the GOP to put some money into voter turn out at all levels, not just relying on the Presidential candidate to do it…which seemed to be their really dumb move this year.

Finally, the conservatives in power need to hold the line.

That means that the debt ceiling does not get raised (unless maybe we adopt the Ryan budget and overturn Obamacare).

That means we don’t make compromises unless we get something we really want or it gets us halfway to our goals….

…oh so you want to raise taxes on the rich. And we want to get rid of loopholes and lower those taxes. We’ll meet you halfway and get rid of all loopholes for those making over $250K. (That way we just have to worry about lowering the rate when we get in).

…oh you want big public work programs and amnesty for all the illegal immigrants (oh I’m sorry we can’t use that term anymore, migrant felons)…okay then we want real immigration reform in exchange for amnesty and we’ll let you have a big public works project building a big damn wall on the southern border.

You know compromises like that.

As for the sequestration…I’m not that concerned about it honestly. Yes it will cut military spending, and in the short run this is problematic. But honestly the smaller military that this dimwit has at his disposal, that’s probably for the best.

These simple things will help us stay true to our values but make us more likely to win, reduce the liberal chance to cheat, and get us what we actually want.

This needs to be the plan the GOP holds to because it is the plan that will work.

But what can we do as individuals? I’ll deal with that in the third part.

*I’m going to spare you the chart with all the state by state numbers unless anyone asks for it.

“It’s all Bush’s fault, my completely inept behavior is not to blame in the least.”

I am tired of Obama claiming that he inherited this mess, that he prevented us from falling into another Great Depression, or that we can’t go back to the failed policies of the past as if it wasn’t his party instituting the failed policies that are actually to blame. All of these lines are lies.

So let’s take these one at a time.

The first is that he inherited a bad economy. The truth is that he helped cause it.

Now how do I justify that?

Well think about the nature of what we say caused something. For instance if someone has HIV and dies, it’s not as simple as saying they have HIV and it killed them. It’s that they have HIV, which caused AIDS, which allowed a flu virus to wreak havoc on their body, caused pneumonia which causes their lungs to fill with water stress the cardio vascular system and either die from drowning or heart failure.

The economy works in a similarly complex way. The Great Depression wasn’t caused by a single point. The terms of the Treaty of Versailles weakened the international economy, caused gross inflation and many nations to default on loans, which hit at the same time as the bust in the natural boom and bust cycle of the US economy. Now if this were the only problem the late 20’s would have seen a strong recession but little else. Rather the US Congress in its usual stupidity considered the grossly idiotic Smoot-Hawley Tariff which would further depress the economy if implemented. Businesses seeing that the tariff would be passed and not being idiots, prepared for worse economic times and pulled back on labor and investment. This is what businesses do when they see bad times ahead, they cut, they save, they batten down the hatches so that they are lean enough and have enough reserves so that they can survive the bad times and still be around for the good times when they come again. (Remember this point I’m going to come back to it). This pullback to survive the coming bad times, combined with being at the height of an investment bubble, some bad banking policy, and the press overhyping the seriousness of the stock market, resulted in Black Tuesday. Now the government turned a moderate recession into a bad one with just the rumor of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff…but then they did two thing that were even worse. The first was that they actually passed the stupid tariff which further hurt trade and then the Federal Reserve, whose almost sole point during this period was to provide short term funds to get us out of emotional portions of panics and economic down turns, didn’t just not provide the funds which they were created to provide, but clamped down on funds and drastically pulled back on funds reducing the stock of money (the opposite of their intended purpose) which caused even more panic*, runs on banks, foreclosures and a whole host of other ripple effects which we call the Great Depression. (This was then further exacerbated by FDR’s policies which turned a depression of a couple years into a decade of suffering). (Am I simplifying here? Yeah. But let’s be honest you were already bored, you don’t want me going further into technicalities).

The point of these two examples is that there are structural problem (HIV and AIDS in the medical example; the boom and bust cycle, issues with banking structure, and the economic problems caused by Versailles in the economic one) and there are inciting incidents that cause the underlying problems to come out with a vengeance (contracting the flu or just considering the Smoot-Hawley Tariff).

How does all of this relate to Obama being the cause of the mess he said he inherited?

Well let’s deal with the structural problems in 2008. High debt (caused by both Democrats** and Republicans over spending), the government forcing banks to make bad loans via the Community Reinvestment Act, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (all Democrats to blame there) which caused a housing bubble, the threat of taxes being raised (Democrats to blame as they wouldn’t allow the Bush tax cuts to be permanent), energy price problems (mainly Dems to blame), corporate welfare weakening the fundamentals of businesses (most Dems, but also the GOP to blame), and over regulation getting in the way of commerce (again mostly Dems to blame).

But these had been issues for years so what was the inciting cause, the thing that made the bubble burst, and more importantly that prevented the usual kind of recovery we generally see in a boom and bust cycle?

Well we could probably find the cause by looking at how business reacts to changes in the political field. As I said before, businesses aren’t stupid, they make long term predictions based on likely outcomes so that they can survive the coming disaster. Under this assumption you would likely see them cutting the fat in their business within a month or so of a development that bodes poorly for the economy (I say a month because it takes about that amount of time for a corporate structure to decide which investments to cut and how many employees they need to shave off the rolls).

So let’s take a look at the job losses in 2008.

Yes I know it says “Jobs Lost” and then shows the loss as negative number…which would actually mean jobs gained…but this is from Pelosi’s website when she was Speaker as I prefer to use Democratic numbers to show that even their own numbers show them to be in the wrong. I can’t help it if she and her staff are too stupid to properly set up a graph.

Now from this it is clear 2008 starts off bad but most of that initial loss you would usually see in a stagnant economy as those are the losses from seasonal jobs. What we actually see are two major changes: one in March where we shift from just mild trimming of the fat to full on cuts, and another in August which starts off a major firing phase. So if it takes a month to respond to what happened in February and July of 2008? Well in February Romney dropped out of the race telling businesses they were going to get stuck with center left Clinton, liberal McCain or socialist Obama…none of these good options. And in July it became obvious to everyone that Obama had the election. Amazing that every time that Obama went up in the polls losses grew. It’s almost as if business hearing the socialist shit he was peddling knew they were in for very long economic hardship…oh wait that’s exactly what they did.

Obama is the inciting incident that like the Smoot-Hawley Tariff sparked all the problems in the system to come to fruition. These were structural problems that for the most part existed for all of his predecessors as well, but only he brought out the worst in this situation. He didn’t inherit a mess, he created one. He took an unstable situation and was the very thing needed to make bad, worse. Yes others others, many others, are to blame for creating the structural problems (Bush included for being so weak willed and liberal in his attitude to the economy), but that doesn’t change the fact that Obama is the touchstone that set the whole mess aflame. And as we’ll see it was Obama who took this bad situation and made it much, much worse.

Now I know I still have to deal with his claims that that he prevented us from falling into another Great Depression, or that we can’t go back to the failed policies of the past as if he wasn’t already instituting the failed policies that are actually to blame…but this blog is already 4 pages long and the most common complaint I get is that these blogs are too long…so I’ll deal with them in follow up blogs.

*Nowadays the Fed has gone to the other idiotic extremes and instead of providing limited amounts of short term funds to help get through the emotion driven lows, they’re pumping money in by the boat load which is as disastrous and idiotic as pulling back.

**And when I say Democrats I’m including RINOs who will always turn on their supposed conservative beliefs just to get their own pork projects…Ron Paul and John McCain come to mind.

Libertarians. Look, we’re not going to get along on everything. Let’s just admit this. Now we can sling insults and hold a grudge match that will get neither of us what we want…or we work together.

Now before we get into my proposal, I would like to go over three basic points.

The first is that it is better to get half of what you want than to get none of what you want. Yes moral superiority might feel good for a few seconds but when it’s dealing with pragmatic issues, actually getting half of what you want is always better psychologically and tangibly.

The second is that politics is a game of trying to convince people who might be open to you. Romney’s 47% comment, despite the Democratic spin, was a pragmatic comment of “there is a percentage of the country that does not agree with me and pandering to them won’t work.” Thus any group that makes it clear that they will never vote for someone because of this or that issue makes themselves politically irrelevant.

The third is that Romney’s going to win. Wednesday’s debate shows that we are going to have 4 debates of Obama and Biden getting their asses handed to them. Add to that the fact that when you consider what we all know, that all the polls (even before the debate) were being cooked and are still being cooked (they’ve now moved from over sampling Democrats to under sampling independents where Romney has a 7 to 8 point lead BEFORE the debates). Then take that fact that the polls are skewed and add the fact that the remaining undecided voters invariably vote 2 to 1 for the challenger, even a conservative estimate makes it clear that Romney already has the electoral votes and 3 more debates like that plus Obama clearly just phoning it in at this point means, that without question, Romney’s going to win.

Now, Libertarians, as much as I have been frustrated with you and your party this year, I say with all honesty, I want you to have a larger influence in all levels of government. I may not agree with you 100% on all things, but trust me there are a lot of issues I stand about halfway between you and the Republican establishment. On a lot of things you are the intellectual foundation of the Tea Party, and I want to see that foundation strengthened, not weakened. I loathe the social conservative branch of the Republican Party, and I was beyond giddy when their nearly Satanic candidate Rick Santorum went down in flames. But guess what? You’re not making it easy to get the Republican Party to embrace it’s Coolidge/Goldwater/Reagan roots of libertarianism and kill this monster called social conservatism that is really just intrusive government under a different branding.

Why are you making it hard? Because you aren’t accepting point one that it’s better to get half than none. The Republican Party does admit that. You tell the Republican Party composed of Milton Friedman monetarists that unless they embrace the most radical branches of Austrian economics you won’t vote for them. And knowing you’re this intractable, if they want capitalists in the GOP to have any chance of halting full on Keynsian socialism, they have to make a deal with the mixed economy people. The GOP is willing to make compromises and go to or three steps to the right or left to keep it centered around their beliefs…but since you demand they go five steps to the right (two or three further than their morals will go) the two steps to left, while repugnant, prevents ten steps to the left. (Of course if you compromised and made the three steps we did you would get more of what you want and we wouldn’t have to constantly compromise with the left). Same goes with social issues. I saw a Reason ad this week hitting Romney/Ryan for being terrible social conservatives who are opposed to medical marijuana. Is this true? Not really. Paul Ryan came out and said that he and Romney wouldn’t personally vote for it if they had a choice, but they consider it a state’s rights issue and will not get the federal government involved. But apparently the libertarians over at Reason are so rigid that unless you embrace both absolute states rights AND complete social liberalism you’re just another big government hack. A pragmatic person would say, if the federal government isn’t getting involved, what does it matter if the people in that government hold a different opinion. But no, unless libertarians get to eat their cake, have it, keep it and eat it again over and over again, nothing is good enough for them.

Libertarians make it quite clear, that unless you march 100% lockstep with them, they will not vote for you. And then they bitch about the fact that the coalition that is the GOP doesn’t listen to them. We may not have a parliamentary government like most of Europe, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have coalitions. We just form them when we form the party not when we form the parliament. And, I’m sorry, if you want to be in the coalition you have to work with the coalition.

And I want you in this coalition. And I want more voice calling for less government in the economy and in my personal life. I want government out of religion and business. I want that to be a legitimate voice that holds sway.

But you have to work with us.

So how do we make the Libertarian vote a legitimate voice again?

Well this election provides a great opportunity.

The first thing I’m going to say that in any state that is clearly 10 point to the Romney or Obama side, if you want to vote for Gary Johnson, vote for Gary Johnson and get your libertarian friends to come out. In these states where, let’s be honest here, your vote isn’t going to make a difference let’s at least make it count by showing that there is a huge number of libertarians out there.

However if you live in a state where theoretically your vote could swing things (remember how close some of these states have been in the last few years) you need to vote for Romney. (In the second half of this blog I’ll show you Romney will give you half of what you want, where Obama will give you nothing, but let me finish this line of thought first). By voting for the Libertarian in large numbers in non-swing states but voting for Romney (and I would hope the GOP Senate and House candidates in close contests if you can stomach it) in swing states you are showing that the Libertarian Party has grown up and is willing to work with the Republican Party. That you are the swing voters the GOP needs to get* and that you are open to working with the GOP.

In addition to this, you need to get every liberal you know to not vote Obama but vote for Johnson. This will give a better clue as to which voters do really care about economic conservatism and social freedom. Let’s be honest you may not agree with Romney on a lot of issues…but is there one you agree with Obama on?

Again this will show the Republican Party you’re open to compromise, that we can drop the social conservatives sometimes, and it will increase the power of the Tea Party and the Libertarian view in federal government. The GOP is probably going to take Congress and the White House, but a move like this will temper any social conservative urge for fear it might alienate the segment they picked up, and embolden them on the economic conservative front as they will believe there will be no backlash. It’s a win for the Libertarians. It’s a win for the Republicans. And it’s a loss for big government.

Let me put out a few common complaints by Libertarians and show you how these complaints are not the case.

If you listened to some in the Libertarian party, these two are to the left of FDR…sane people know there is a difference between these guys and their opposition.

As I pointed out above, the Romney and Ryan ticket believe in states rights…and unlike Obama they’re not going to waste federal dollars prosecuting medical marijuana cases. It may not be full legalization, but the end result is the same.

Another claim is that he’s going to outlaw abortion. No he’s not, he’s going to try to get rid of all funding for Planned Parenthood. You’re libertarians, like me, even if you’re pro-choice you should support getting rid of government funding of abortion. Now he has said he’s supporting an Amendment to the Constitution–1. The president has absolutely no power and no role in the process of adding amendments and 2. There is no way you will ever see 38 states agree to banning abortion…thus him saying that he’ll support an Amendment is like saying “I’d support cold fusion if someone actually created it”, it doesn’t matter because it’s not going to happen. But yes he can appoint judges to the Supreme Court who might do something conservative judges hardly ever do, overturn previous major decisions…which would make abortion a states rights issue again (the court has the power to make something legal, but it has no authority to make something illegal…all overturning Roe would do is make it a states rights issue)…hey aren’t you libertarians in favor of states rights issues?

On spending Libertarians keep going off on Romney’s budgets in Massachusetts and the Ryan plan. Did you miss that both cases were budgets designed to pass legislatures controlled by liberal Democrats? Yes those things didn’t solve all the problems. But they were as close as these two conservatives felt they could reasonably get past liberal legislatures. (Romney’s did…and if Harry Reid wasn’t illegally stopping the bills from coming up, the Ryan plan would have passed as well.). The actual outline of the budget (and it’s only an outline because Romney understands it is the House that is the only body with the Constitutional authority to draft the specifics of a budget). There is nothing in the Romney plan, or the 59 points of that plan that will not lead to cuts in government spending.

Yeah, after these 59 major things, I have no idea what Romney will do…

Screw the first 100 days, the first 100 hours is going to be productive under Romney.

On taxes this is the most bizarre one of all. Romney didn’t raise a single tax as Governor of Massachusetts. Taxachusetts. That’s impressive. That shows commitment to keeping taxes down. Libertarians scream that he did raise taxes. This is either a lie or insanity. What Romney did do was raise fees for government services. Why libertarians are upset with this, I’m not entirely sure…for decades I have heard and read capitalists from the more moderate Sowell, Freidman and Hayek to the extreme of Rand in the later years (after she had completely gone off the deep end) and every shade of capitalist and libertarian in between say that it would be better if the government raised revenue through fees rather than taxes. Then someone does that…and libertarians scream he’s a bleeding heart liberal…for doing what they suggested. WTF? Are there some in the libertarian party (those with the pulpit) suffering from Romney-derangement syndrome? I think so. Yeah it would be better if he lowered taxes (you know like he wants to at the federal level) but let’s see how many taxes you could get lowered with a legislature that’s 87% Democrat?

The Patriot Act and NDAA…look we’re not going to agree on this one. And you’re not going to get what you want out of either Romney or Obama. What you will get is that Romney won’t sue courts to put back indefinite detention of captured foreigners (the bill that passed didn’t include indefinite detention of U.S. citizens who have not already committed an act of treason (which technically you could already hold them even without NDAA) (Libertarians are now going to throw a hissy fit and tell me I’m wrong….here’s the link to the bill find for me the text that says otherwise…I’ll save you some time, it’s not there). And yeah, Romney will use what parts of the Patriot Act haven’t been overturned by courts to go after terrorism (and most of you do realize that the majority of the Patriot Act was just extending the powers the federal government had against organized crime to terrorism, getting rid of the Patriot Act won’t get rid of the powers if you have someone like Obama who is willing to abuse every law for personal gain.) I can say that, unlike Obama, Romney will keep to the letter and spirit of the law. You don’t like it, and we won’t agree…but you have to admit one is better than the other.

Defense. Again you’re not going to get what you want here. But would you prefer someone like Goldwater and Reagan who understand peace through strength and keep conflicts to a minimum….or someone like LBJ, Carter, and Obama who through gross incompetence spark conflicts that eventually draw us in whether we want them or not. Further, I know you want the defense budget cut…Romney’s not going to cut troops or arms or the size of the Navy…but this is the genius of Bain. Do you really think he’s not going to have some very good people go through every department and go line by line looking at all the worthless bullshit and eliminate that? Romney, will give you cuts in every department’s budget. Big ones. If you let him.

Look, like I said at the beginning it’s better to get half of what you want than nothing. Romney will give you that half. Obama won’t. Romney believes in smaller government, Obama doesn’t.

I said that to be relevant you have to show that you’re willing to work with us.

And Romney’s going to win.

It’s up to you. You can do what I suggested, vote for Romney in the swing states, vote for Johnson in the non-swing states and get every libertarian leaning liberal to vote for him too. This will show the Libertarians have numbers but are also willing to work with the GOP, thus they can and should be courted as a voting block.

Or you can hold to your rigid stance that Romney and Obama are the same. Attack both of them. And keep your ideas marginalized, keep the GOP beholden to social conservatives, and make it that much harder to get big government off our backs.

I hope you chose the win-win-win plan I’m suggesting, and not the lose-lose-lose plan of just holding rigidly to anti-Romney.

(Oh if there is some issue you truly feel Obama and Romney are the same on, let me know and give me a chance to dissuade you…but first please ask yourself if they really are the same…or it is just that Romney will only give you part of what you want and Obama will give you none.)

*Some might say that alienating the social conservative base will cause Republicans to lose. But if you actually look at polls endlessly like I do, you’ll see that what turns a lot of moderate Democratic voters off of the GOP is not the economics but the social issues. It’s a gamble I know, but if the GOP moved a little away from social conservatives I think they’ll win 3 blue dog Democrats for every social conservative radical (Santorum) who leaves the party. But there has to actually be more than just Ron and Rand Paul advocating for this in the party.

Tax policy is probably going to get very heated in the next few months. So let’s deal with a simple bit of conservative economics (Austrians and Monetarists should both not have any problems with this): The Laffer Curve

Economist Dan Mitchell says it better than I could, so let’s listen to him.

Now two very important things I would take away from this. The first is that you will notice that he states that cuts such as new deductions have little to no effect on improving the economy, whereas actual cuts in the rate itself do.

You’ll also notice that this is exactly what Romney and Ryan are proposing, getting rid of deductions and lowering the rate. Thus you are replacing cuts that have no effect on the growth of the economy with cuts that do.

But when he asks silly question like “What will the effect be if we count the tax cuts but not the reductions in your tax plan?” (My paraphrasing, but that’s essentially what he asks.) So if we take half of your plan and only look at part of it and ignore other integral parts of it. Might as well ask a surgeon, “Doesn’t cutting into people cause them great pain? And you can’t bring up anesthetic. You cut into people, you terrible, terrible monster.” (But this is the same Wallace who asks “Why are you losing?” to Ryan when he should be asking “Why are we skewing the polls so badly).

So when Ryan says the actual plan will be deficit neutral, it will be deficit neutral because you can easily eliminate lots of the insane deductions out there and trust me there is more than enough to cut to make the 20% tax break (and that means cutting 20% of the current rate, that is, if your current rate is 25% your new rate will be 20%, .8x.25=.2)

And that’s not even counting the fact that such cuts will have a positive effect on the economy (thus they’re being revenue neutral, just on the fact of it, means they will bring in more revenue after the economy jumps…add to that cutting regulations and the federal work force…hmmm).

So keep all of this in mind when you hear about taxes in the upcoming discussion of who should be president.

In “Obstruct and Exploit” he makes the rather farcical claim that the economy is not the fault of the Democrats (the Democrats who control the Senate and refuse to pass the budget) as good people and the Republicans are evil obstructionists.

Actually he makes several bizarre claims…like that Romney is a Keynesian who wants to use military spending to create jobs. Paul, I know you’re a dimwitted hack, but do you know how to listen to speeches or how to read policy papers? Romney is concerned primarily about defense spending because with Chinese expansion in the Pacific, a resurgent al-Qaeda from the Arab Spring, and Putin wanting to reestablish the Soviet Empire you’d have to be as dumb as Ron Paul or Neville Chamberlain to not see that maybe we might need an American military to deal with problems that are obviously coming. The fact that cutting defense would cut jobs merely tangential to the discussion, but true. The goal of Romney’s policies with defense spending are to protect America and Classical Liberalism in general, not to create jobs. But you’d have to actually read his statements to know that.

But let’s actually deal with the heart of his argument. You can’t blame Obama because his ideas have been stopped at every turn (let’s ignore that Obama had a Democratic Congress for two years and only did things that ruined the economy…yes I’m sure Obama would have suddenly come up with good ideas if his party was still in power…). For instance Obama has the American Jobs Act, which Krugman implies would have saved America. (Again let’s ignore that not all of Obama’s Democrats voted for the bill.) As Krugman points out “Obama proposed boosting the economy with a combination of tax cuts and spending increases,” (and let’s ignore the 5.6% tax increase on the wealthy that was in the bill so we can’t call it a tax cut, chalk another lie up to Paul Krugman). I’m personally stunned just at the statement lower taxes and raise spending…cause the raising of our debt even further is a bright idea how Paul? Show me cut taxes and cut spending and cut regulation and then you might have a plan that would work.

But let’s go over the AJA to see what it has in it. That Krugman in his infinite idiocy thinks would work…and for fun let’s compare the points from the Romney plan.

So let me get this straight here, further making Social Security unsound is a good thing? Yes I love having more money, and I would love if we were to privatize the whole thing, just paying off on benefits for everyone who is going to be on Social Security in the next 10 years…but that’s not what this is. It’s keeping the same Ponzi scheme but simply making it more insolvent. Good plan genius. You know I like the extra money, and I hate social security…but under this plan it will cost me and future generations more in the long run.

Meanwhile the Romney plan offers real tax cuts that will actually spur growth of business (i.e. job growth) and actually end up putting more money in your pocket. (All points of Romney’s are taken from his 59 point plan and are italicized…Romney has a lot more than that plan…but I’m trying to be fair here and compare one bullet pointed plan to another…if I actually compared substantive proposals of Romney to what passes as substance from Obama it would just be more embarrassing for the President and Krugman)

Pursue a conservative overhaul of the tax system over the long term that includes lower,

flatter rates on a broader base

Reduce corporate income tax rate to 25 percent

Extending 100% expensing into 2012

Reforms and regulatory reductions to help entrepreneurs and small businesses access capital.

So we’re going to force more banks to make more bad loans (probably to Obama cronies like every other Obama “investment”) and we’re then going to let them write off the investment they made with money that banks were forced to give them (and if every other Obama venture is any indication they’ll be allowed to pocket the money, declare bankruptcy and have the loans forgiven by Obama). And as icing I’m sure Obama will blame the banks again for the effect on the economy.

And instead of regulations designed to help Obama supporters, Romney has real regulation reform in his plan that will help every business.

Repeal Dodd-Frank and replace with streamlined, modern regulatory framework

Initiate review and elimination of all Obama-era regulations that unduly burden the economy

Impose a regulatory cap of zero dollars on all federal agencies

Require congressional approval of all new “major” regulations

A “Returning Heroes” hiring tax credit for veterans

Again picking winners and losers, not what the government should be doing. Not improving the economy to actually create more jobs, we’re just going to make it a good call for businesses to fire their existing employees, hire new ones (probably at a lower rate) and a tax write off for it. (Now the good news is most businesses won’t behave in this terrible fashion…except, you know, the kind of bastards who pay off Obama for crony connections).

Screw helping this group or that group, Romney has the reform that will kill the single biggest killer of jobs there is:

Repeal Obamacare

Preventing up to 280,000 teacher layoffs, while keeping cops and firefighters on the job.

Modernizing at least 35,000 public schools across the country, supporting new science labs, Internet-ready classrooms and renovations at schools across the country, in rural and urban areas.

Yeah that’s it, we need the federal government getting involved in local and state matters. Oh, and given the spectacular behavior of teachers in Chicago, getting an average of $76,000 a year (before benefits) to get 80% of students to learn nothing…it’s clear that what the education system needs is new facilities and keeping all the current teachers…and not, you know fire all the union pieces of shit who offend the very profession of teaching by daring to call their pathetic behavior teaching.

You really want to help workers and really want to get better hiring practices for not only government but all employees try these points from the Romney plan:

Appoint to the NLRB experienced individuals with respect for the rule of law Amend NLRA to explicitly protect the right of business owners to allocate their capital as they see fit

Amend NLRA to guarantee the secret ballot in every union certification election

Amend NLRA to guarantee that all pre-election campaigns last at least one month

Again, trying to get businesses to just create jobs isn’t going to work. You need to improve the fundamentals of an economy to create growth (which would include lowering taxes, lowering regulation, lowering government, lowering the deficit, strengthening the dollar, and getting free trade agreements—none of which this administration has done).

Or maybe you can be responsible for your own life

Facilitate the creation of Personal Re-employment Accounts

Prohibiting employers from discriminating against unemployed workers

So you mean I can’t take into account whether a person was fired or not in deciding whether they’re going to be a good employee…like every other form of “discrimination” legislation in the last 30 years this is just a pay off to the trial lawyers and will result in even less growth and less jobs.

Or instead of making more bad lawsuits you could have real Tort reform.

Reform legal liability system to prevent spurious litigation

Expanding job opportunities for low-income youth and adults through a fund for successful approaches for subsidized employment, innovative training programs and summer/year-round jobs for youth.

“Subsidized employment.” You’re kidding right? You’re going to pay people to hire people. (And keep in mind Obama was touting this plan as including tax cuts…so where exactly is the money for this coming from? Oh I forgot Obama won’t be happy until the debt is three times the size of the GDP.)

But how about rather than subsidizing hiring people but actually making a climate where you can actually hire good people.

Support states in pursuing Right-to-Work laws

Reverse executive orders issued by President Obama that tilt the playing field toward organized labor

Allowing more Americans to refinance their mortgages at today’s near 4 percent interest rates

This would be a choice for the banks, not the government…which means the President is planning to control the banks even more and force them to do more stupid things…you know the behavior that got us into this mess.

There is no exact counterpart to this, but the fact is that Romney will not rule by fiat, like some people.

5Fully Paid for as Part of the President’s Long-Term Deficit Reduction Plan. To ensure that the American Jobs Act is fully paid for, the President will call on the Joint Committee to come up with additional deficit reduction necessary to pay for the Act and still meet its deficit target. The President will, in the coming days, release a detailed plan that will show how we can do that while achieving the additional deficit reduction necessary to meet the President’s broader goal of stabilizing our debt as a share of the economy.

The humor of this part speaks for itself.

But Romney does have some real plans on how to deal with the insane size of government

Cap federal spending at 20 percent of GDP Undertake fundamental restructuring of government programs and services

Pursue a Balanced Budget Amendment

The fact of the matter is that Paul Krugman putting up Obama’s abysmal American Jobs Act as the better part of his proposed legislation shows you how unspeakably stupid Krugman is and how bereft of any real ideas Obama is. Romney has real plans not just platitudes that have some conception of how the economy works. Now I’ve breezed over a lot of Romney’s plans, I do this intentionally, I want you to go and do the research on your own and see for yourself that his plans are

God help us. If we ran every company in the nation like this cluster!@#$ the Dark Ages would look advanced by the time Obama was done.

So why does Obama want to run every industry like GM…hmmm…let’s see. That would mean that the government would own a large portion of the every company and the president would have the ability to fire every CEO and would have the power to appoint his people to run every industry.

Hey what do you call that where the government owns and runs every business?

It starts with an S….um…shit for brains…serious deluded…senseless…stupid…all good answers…but no, I think the word I’m looking for is SOCIALISM.

His words, not mine.

Now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry.

He wants to do the same thing he did with the auto industry, a complete government take over and revoking of basic principles, with every industry.

Go on, I really want to hear from liberals how that isn’t a textbook definition of socialism. Government ownership and control of every industry.

Granted you could go with he’s a blithering idiot and doesn’t know what the hell he’s saying, which I fully am willing to buy…but that is just as much an argument against him being allowed to go back for four more years.

But while I do believe Obama makes Forrest Gump look like Sherlock Holmes, I believe he meant and understood (well as well as Obama’s limited mind can understand anything). He wants to control everything. I don’t know if it’s because he believes he can make it better (to hell with the lack of evidence) or because he wants to destroy the whole system. It doesn’t matter. He does want to be in control of everything, of every aspect of government and industry. And just ignoring the horrific despotic and unconstitutional overtones of that idea…let’s not forget that he has wrecked GM and it will go down within the next few years, only it will be worth less when we sell off the parts to other car companies, it will have hurt every taxpayer who has to eat the loss, and this whole debacle will have delayed real growth and real recovery. (And all of this ignores that eventually the courts will find that the Obama administration broke numerous laws in screwing over the bond holders which will cost the government a massive bundle of cash to boot).

This is true of GM and of industry Obama has or wants to get his hands on. This is true not only of Obama but of government in general. And Obama wants more government.

To hell with just “You didn’t build that” he wants complete socialism.

And half the country doesn’t see a problem with this?

…

A final point. Even though Obama is clearly a socialist (and an idiot, and an asshole, and a wannabe tyrant…and worse), many conservatives are still clamoring and screaming about the fact that Romney isn’t going to war against Obama, about him being too cowardly or being too nice and calling Obama out as the socialist he is. Yeah because Reagan won the election calling Carter a communist anti-Semite whose utter lack of intelligence makes you question how much inbreeding is going on down in Georgia…oh wait, no, Reagan ran a quiet campaign on the issues. Romney is running an intelligent campaign to win by a landslide, not a campaign to make the base feel good about itself; he’s running to make sure conservative ideals become policy, not to just spout conservative platitudes. He’s sitting quietly right now raking in cash, while Obama burns through his entire reserve just to keep the polls static. Romney will spend his money in the last months when it will actually have an effect on Election Day, while Obama will be broke by October. Besides with Obama saying crazy shit like this, why would you need to campaign, Obama’s mouth is already the best campaigner for Romney there is.